places to sell photos online

iStock Photo

iStock Photo is a great place for those just
starting out selling stock photos. Its popular
forums and resources will help you to find your
feet, and to understand the world of photo sales.

The standard royalty payout for iStock Photo
starts at only 15% per download, but this can
increase to 45% depending on the popularity of
your photos. If a customer purchases a photo
using one of the subscription “credits” however,
royalty rates are 15% by default.
If you’re willing to sell your photos exclusively

on iStock Photo, the site will thank you by
offering 22-45% royalties. This exclusivity
contract can be ended if you give the company
30 days notice.

PhotoShelter

If you want to sell your photos, but would rather
make those sales through your own site,
PhotoShelter is a great tool for this. At its core,
it’s a photography-oriented e-commerce platform
that you can integrate into almost any website.

This includes cloud storage for your photos, an
intuitive interface, decent SEO (search engine
optimization), and several social media
integrations.
The benefits of this option include retaining full
control over how your photos are displayed, not
having your competitors photos displayed

alongside your own, and the ability earn much
more of the sale price. A couple of other similar
alternatives are Fotomoto and Pixpa .
Fotolia

With over 4 million buyers, Adobe’s Fotolia is a
beautiful site that offers royalties of between
20-46% . These royalties are deposited into your
account immediately, unlike with many other
sites where you have to wait to reach a
threshold, or payments are made every 30 days.

The site has been in operation for over 10 years,
and now houses over 45 million images.
Relatively recently it was integrated into several
of Adobe’s software packages, including
Photoshop , Illustrator and InDesign. This means

that when you upload a photo to Fotolia, it’s also
added to Adobe Stock , so people can buy your
photos directly from within those applications.

PhotoMoolah

If you want a different way of selling your photos,
try PhotoMoolah. This is a site where you can
submit relevant photos to different contests .

If
your photo is picked as one of the winners, you
get paid while retaining your rights. The site isn’t
yet massively popular, meaning there’s less
competition for aspiring photographers.

As a couple of examples, there’s currently a
contest looking for photos of “Australian and
European kids playing outdoors” , offering a prize
of $200.

There’s another looking for “Unique
selfie shots in Singapore” , where you could also
win $200. Prizes have been known to go up to
$500, but most are $100-200.

SmugMug

The SmugMug “Pro” package is an alternative to
PhotoShelter. The platform enables you to
showcase your work on a massively customizable
storefront, and to manage your orders.

The main distinguishing feature is the ability to
use the SimplyMug labs to offer prints, books,
and greetings cards created from your shots.
There are additional features such as the ability
to create coupons, photo packages, and built-in
analytics. You’ll also get to keep up to 85% of
your revenue.